Pandora on virtual machine?

[T.T.]

Is there any way to get the pandora os to work in a virtual machine?


I want to see what it would be like while I wait for my pandora

 

[DaMummy]

1. get virtual machine


2. get random xfce os


3. boot up xfce in virtual machine


4. ????


5. Profit!

 

[Mr Rob]

Hello T.T.


DaMummy is correct, if you're looking to just try out the XFCE interface, really any Linux OS would do (Debian, for example, or Ubuntu) and you'd just need to install the xfce4 desktop environment on it.


If you're looking to, say, try the PND system or run any of the applications in a virtual machine, you'll run into bigger problems. VirtualBox and the like don't emulate different architectures (ARM vs x86 for example), and (almost) all of the PNDs are targeting ARM processors; the one I know of that can do that is qemu, which is significantly more difficult to set up than Virtualbox and friends.

 

[Prometheus]

^ DM and Mr Rob are quite right.


I would add, though, that if you try out something like Xubuntu (the official variant of Ubuntu that uses Xfce by default), you won't need to add that yourself. In fact, you could just try out the LiveCD.

 

[T.T.]

well I have tried an xfce based linux and quite liked it. It's good to know that arm won't work in virtual box

 

[Letalis Sonus]

VirtualBox and the like don't emulate different architectures

And what's with x86 vs AMD64?


They don't emulate architectures at all. They virtualize. Therefore they can only provide what's already available (at least CPU-wise).

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Use Qemu.


If you dislike command line there's a nice frontend for it named aqemu.

 

[WorldTripping]

Is there any way to get the pandora os to work in a virtual machine?


I want to see what it would be like while I wait for my pandora

As all of the above people have stated, running a different OS and Desktop in a virtual machine will give you the OS and Desktop for the hardware you are running the virtual machine on (probably x86 if you are using a desktop).


(Yes I know some people run 64 bit and other architectures, but the majority of people use x86.)


However as MrRob stated QEMU can be used as a machine emulator, so you should be able to set it up to run the ARM Angstrom distro and xfce desktop and have it run the .pnds too.

QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.


When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance.


When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. QEMU supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, QEMU can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, and S390 guests.

Source:


http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page

 

[mcobit]

There actually was a qemuimage of the pandoraos in early developement.

 

[DaMummy]

didnt somebody mention that the pandora os runs on archos 5? including some pnds

 

[Caine]

There actually was a qemuimage of the pandoraos in early developement.

Is there a thread about this as well?

 

[mcobit]

Not sure, if there is one, it should be on gp32x.de

 

[T.T.]

I'll have to try qemu, it could be interesting

 

[myownlittlworld]

Could somebody put instructions to do this on the wiki somewhere? I'd love to follow a guide to get it running, and it'd make waiting for my Pandora a lot easier.

 

[ibisum]

EDIT: de-Troll.


I think its fully feasible to run Pandora in qemu, lets try to make a VM image script from the released firmware bins ..

I want to see what it would be like while I wait for my pandora

I think its possible to set up minimenu on a local PC and run it that way, if you want to see the minimenu experience .. but for the linux-desktop experience it would be easier to forget ARM emulation and just get the angstrom-x86 VM image thats floating around out there and boot it .. The reason this would be better, I think, is because there are builds of angstrom-x86 that allow VMWare and so on to properly do VM-based GL acceleration; not so feasible with ARM, I think. At least, I've seen angstrom-x86 with GL acceleration, running both ES1/2 profiles. If I encounter the VM image, I'll post it back ..





Pandora "linux-desktop" is really just like Angstrom vanilla, albeit the menu changes whenever a PND is detected. If you want that experience, build a little Linux VM using native architecture, and install the same list of packages from the Angstrom repo .. you won't be able to run PND's, so if that matters to you, ignore everything I said ..